


lace trim danger

by sunset_skies



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Established Relationship, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, M/M, MAYBE???? man idek, Minor Character Death, Morally Ambiguous Character, Murder, Serial Killers, Unhealthy Relationships, cerealkiller!jaemin, help i Do Not Know how to tag, loyal lover and sidekick!chenle, oh and, they're just murderous boyfriends i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27192391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunset_skies/pseuds/sunset_skies
Summary: Chenle decides that there is a fine line between a look of love and admiration and one that of bloodlust, because it’s getting really hard to tell between the two with Jaemin.
Relationships: Na Jaemin/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46
Collections: NCT Spookfest 2020





	lace trim danger

**Author's Note:**

> Hiiii helloo!!
> 
> This fic marks my very first foray into fic fests and I'm really excited to participate in NCT Spookfest! I'm also happy to announce this is the fastest I've ever completed a fic with a time limit, we love character development <3
> 
> The title is taken from "Pretty Thoughts" by Alina Baraz, but I recommend listening to The Neighbourhood's "Compass" instead while you're reading this. It's the song that I listened to on repeat while writing this and I hope you get the same vibes reading this as when I worked on it!
> 
> Disclaimer:  
> This fic contains mentions of blood, violence and murder (it /is/ about serial killers after all) and questionable/unhealthy relationships. Read at your own discretion but I do not recommend reading this if you are uncomfortable with any of those that I just mentioned. Also, please keep in mind that this is a work of fiction and the portrayals of the characters in this work are not how I view the NCT members in real life. P.S. I don't condone murder!
> 
> With that said, jaemle nation this is 4 u!! *completely misses the shot*

The night is cold, cold enough for Chenle to grab his sweater from the backseat as the chill settles in the car. The fog hangs low above the fields around him, and he can barely see the street light a few yards in front of him. Jaemin had phoned earlier, asked to come pick him up here, a small road less traveled near the town’s edge. Any sane person would question Jaemin’s whereabouts at almost 2 a.m. in the morning, but Chenle isn’t one.

Chenle slips the sweater on, and he can’t suppress the yawn that slips past his lips as he does so. It _is_ two in the morning, after all. Jaemin _had_ told him his plans earlier this morning, so Chenle had seen it coming, but really? Two in the morning? Although, he supposes that it’s the only time of day socially acceptable for Jaemin’s plans.

It’s not that he’s impatient, he’s just bored, really. So he picks up his phone and dials Jaemin. It takes all but two rings for him to pick up.

“Hey babe!” comes Jaemin’s cheery voice through the speaker. “What’s up?”

Chenle yawns again. “I’m here, so can you get it done quickly? And try not to make too much of a mess.”

“Oh! Don’t worry babe, I’ll be there soon,” Jaemin says. Chenle can hear the honey in his voice, and he can hear the muffled groan in the background, too. “Wait for me, m’kay?”

“M’kay,” Chenle mumbles. “Love you,” he says quietly. 

“Love you too. See ya!” and Jaemin hangs up.

Just like Jaemin promised, it’s not long after that when Chenle catches a glimpse in the side mirror, a figure emerging from the fog, limping towards the car. Any sane person would start the car and gun the gas to get the hell out of there, but Chenle isn’t one. Not when he knows what Jaemin does, it’s for sport.

A bloody hand comes thundering down on the car window next to Chenle. There’s a man outside, and he’s yelling, begging, unrelentlessly to be let into the car, hands banging on the window and scrambling at the door handle. But Chenle isn’t fazed - he simply gives the man a blank stare.

There’s more movement in the side mirror, and this time it’s Jaemin emerging from the fog, stalking towards the bleeding man. The man’s eyes widen at the sight of Jaemin, pounding more fervently on the window. He cowers, his bottom lip quivering, and rushes to hide behind the front of the car, leaving bloody handprints on the hood. Right now the red streaks are stark against the clean white of Chenle’s car, but when he’s going sixty miles an hour in the darkness of two in the morning, he doubts anyone will notice.

Jaemin pauses by the driver’s side to smile and wave at Chenle through the window, which he returns. When Chenle looks back to the man in front of the car, he can see the exact moment the man realises he isn’t coming to his rescue. The man starts openly sobbing, his tears streaming down his face and mixing into the blood on the side of his head. Chenle can only stare.

“Well,” Jaemin starts, his voice muffled through the glass as he stands above the man. “It really was such a pleasure meeting you today, Mark,” he says, lips stretching into a grin. 

Jaemin twirls the knife in his hand, and the glint of the streetlights reflecting on the blade is almost mesmerising. 

“Sad to see you go so soon,” he says, pouting only momentarily, but a grin starts to form as he grabs the man by the back of his shirt and brings the knife down.

Again, and again, and again.

Messy, unforgiving, and absolutely ruthless.

And yet, as blood spatters over his face and clothes, Jaemin doesn’t look the slightest bit bothered. If anything, his smile grows with every stab into the very much already dead man. Any sane person would fear for their life at the sight of this, but Chenle isn’t one.

There’s a loud thud that shakes the car as Jaemin loads the dead man into the trunk of the car. Chenle chooses to ignore this, as he’s done all the times Jaemin asked him to help him with the clean up job. Jaemin is good at it too, ignoring the elephant in the room - the dead man in the trunk - because as soon as he finishes wiping his bloodied hand on his jeans, he turns to Chenle and smiles like a child who just got a puppy as a birthday present.

“Hey babe, how was your day?”

Chenle decides that there is a fine line between a look of love and admiration and one that of bloodlust, because it’s getting really hard to tell between the two with Jaemin.

Jaemin glances at the hood and the windshield, smeared with red streaks of blood, and he snorts, his smile aloof.

“So much for not making a mess, huh?”

Chenle rids himself of the sweater he’d put on earlier and falls into bed, sighing. “Fourteen times, Jaemin. How many more do I have to help you cover up?”

Jaemin doesn’t bother shutting the door of the bedroom behind him, nor does he bother ridding himself of his bloodstained clothes. He just climbs onto the bed and lies next to Chenle. Jaemin hovers over him, faces inches apart, and lifts a hand up to Chenle’s cheek. His touch is soft, feather-light on Chenle’s face. Chenle relaxes into it.

Jaemin’s voice is even softer when he says, almost whispers, “Last one, I promise.”

Chenle scans over Jaemin’s face, tries so hard to read it, but Jaemin has always been really good at hiding his emotions. All Chenle can pick up on is the fond gaze in his eyes and his lips upturned in a soft smile. This look, Chenle concludes, is a warm, loving one, and not of bloodlust. Chenle thinks that it’s quite ironic that some would die for their lover, but Jaemin would stop killing for his.

A spot of dark red on the collar of Jaemin’s yellow sweater catches Chenle’s eyes, and then he notices the spatter of dark red over the yellow flowers embroidered on the breast of the sweater.

Blood has never really bothered Chenle - he’s seen plenty of it in his time with Jaemin - but tonight, he can’t bear the sight of it on him. He tugs at Jaemin’s sweater then, and mutters, “Take it off. I want it off, now.”

A laugh erupts from Jaemin’s lips. “You’ve always been so impatient, love,” he says, and sits up to slip the sweater above his head, tossing it into the laundry basket in the corner of the room. He turns back to Chenle, presenting him the pristine white shirt he was wearing under the sweater. “Better?”

Chenle juts his chin at Jaemin’s jeans. “You’ve got it on your jeans, too,” he says, to which Jaemin huffs another laugh.

“Now you just want to get in my pants, Chenle,” he jokes, an eyebrow raised. He simply presses a long kiss to Chenle’s forehead instead.

Jaemin slides further up the bed and gently pats the space next to him, beckoning Chenle to come closer with wide arms. “C’mere, baby.”

So Chenle does. He sinks into the mattress next to Jaemin and buries his face in his shoulder. Jaemin wastes no time wrapping his arm around Chenle, latching onto him, and kisses the top of his head.

It’s warm like this, in Jaemin’s embrace that Chenle never fails to fall into - as he has done so, _so many_ times before. Perhaps it’s for good reason, because Chenle has never known a love other than this. He never has, and he never plans to, anyway. It’s nice, being with Jaemin, even if Chenle has buried thirteen bodies with him in the woods behind their shared home.

They fall into a nice silence, one only perforated by the sounds of Chenle’s own breath as it fans over Jaemin’s neck. Chenle almost succumbs to the lull of sleep when Jaemin says, easily, simply, “I love you.”

Jaemin pulls away a little bit, forcing Chenle to lift his head and rest it on the pillow instead. “You do know that, right?”

Chenle hums in agreement, trying hard not to succumb to the sleep just yet. “Of course,” he croaks, eyes fluttering open, gazing to the ceiling. “That’s a dumb question, Jaemin. Of course I love you.” 

Jaemin smiles. He leans in, and Chenle raises a hand to cup his jaw as their lips touch. Jaemin’s hand crawls to the back of Chenle’s neck and he tugs him closer, forcing him to angle his chin up. Jaemin chuckles, low, and Chenle can feel the rumble deep in his chest.

Kissing Jaemin is so, _so nice._ Chenle has known this for a long time now, but it never fails to leave him dizzy with the taste of Jaemin on his tongue. With him, Jaemin is gentle, with his languid lips and hands that smooth over Chenle’s skin with the utmost care. Chenle has long stopped wondering how the same hands caressing his cheek are the same hands that ruin whole families.

“Of course I love you,” Chenle repeats through ragged breaths after unlatching himself from Jaemin. He purses his lips. “Even all the ugly, rotten bits of you.”

Jaemin’s lips split into a grin. “Even the ugly, rotten bits, you say?” he asks, blinking in feigned innocence.

Chenle is still catching his breath as he grazes his fingers over the dark spot of blood on Jaemin’s jeans, and he gulps. “You scare me sometimes, Jaemin,” he whispers. “But I would be lying if I told you I didn’t love you. All of you.”

_And that’s what scares me the most._

Chenle wakes to the ruckus of Jaemin searching for a shovel in the garage. It had been weeks since they last buried a body, and since then Chenle had moved the shovel from the garage to the shed in the backyard for easier access.

He grumbles, shaking off the sheets and stretching with his hands above his head. With all the strength his vocal chords can muster at 9am, he shouts, “It’s in the shed!”

He’s met with silence, Jaemin seemingly to have stopped looking in the garage. Chenle sighs. It’s too early in the day to be digging a grave, and all he wants is to go back to bed with Jaemin, but he knows Jaemin is expecting him downstairs.

When Chenle opens the back door a few minutes later, Jaemin is already at the edge of the woods behind the house, shovel tucked under his left armpit and dead man dragging on the ground at his feet. Chenle notices Jaemin hasn’t even changed out of his clothes from the night before, the blood stains on his jeans having dried into a dark brown colour.

“Morning, babe,” Jaemin says, flashing a quick smile at Chenle before getting back to the body on the ground. “You came to help?”

“Always,” Chenle says under his breath, plodding to Jaemin and the body. He picks up the dead man by the shoulders, and they enter the foliage.

While they’ve done this many times before, it’s never pretty, digging a shallow grave for a fresh corpse. The body is always too stiff to move, skin too disgustingly cold and clammy to the touch, and worst above all, is when the soil gets under his fingernails.

They’re covering the freshly made grave with leaves and twigs when Chenle fixes a hard stare on Jaemin and says, “It _is_ your last one, right? You promised.”

Jaemin nods. Slowly, reluctantly. “Yeah.”

Chenle chooses to ignore the way Jaemin’s eyes linger on the patch of freshly dug up soil and the man he killed lying underneath it.

“Good,” Chenle says. He licks his lips, dry from working with the dirt, and leans back on the tree trunk behind him. “Because you’ve been getting sloppy with your kills, and I never want to lose you because you mess up and leave traces behind.”

Jaemin finally looks away from the new grave, and a lopsided smile starts to form on his lips, his eyes sparkling.

“Oh, Chenle,” he breathes, and moves to sit on the tree root Chenle is perched at. He grabs Chenle’s dirty hands, smooths a thumb over the back of his hand. “Don’t you ever worry about losing me, because..”

Their hands feel so disgusting right now, caked up with soil and dirt and probably tetanus, but Chenle starts playing with Jaemin’s hands regardless. “Because?”

“Because,” Jaemin repeats, interlocking their fingers in a tight grip. He leans in slowly to press a soft kiss to the corner of Chenle’s lips. When he speaks again, his low voice right next to Chenle’s ear makes him shiver.

“You never will, baby. I’ll always have you with me, no matter what.”

Jaemin pulls away, smile as sweet as it always is, and Chenle feels himself being pulled into Jaemin’s gravity all over again.

“Now!” Jaemin exclaims with his usual chipper tone as he gets to his feet. “What do you say we get out of here and get milkshakes?”

Any sane person would never go on a diner date for milkshakes with someone they just buried a body with, but Chenle is _definitely_ not one.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m sorry if this wasn’t as spooky as you may have expected hehe it technically still fits with the theme!! i just wanted to write serial killer jaemin and ended up making it too centered on the relationship
> 
> comments are appreciated and you’re always welcome to talk to me on [twitter](%E2%80%9Ctwitter.com/666zhong%E2%80%9D) <33


End file.
